President Macron plays waiting game in long-awaited TV interview

In his first set-piece television interview since becoming France's president in May, Emmanuel Macron was in unrepentant mood, refusing to apologise over a string of controversial remarks which he now claims have been misunderstood. Speaking on the privately-owned TF1 television station, the centrist president also said the country would have to wait for up to two years for his reforms to take effect. Hubert Huertas analyses President Macron's much-anticipated television appearance.

It was an hour into his television appearance on Sunday night before President Emmanuel Macron summed up the main thrust of his message, using a rhetorical device to make his point. “You said 'he won't be elected without a party', it happened; you said 'he won't get a hearing abroad' and it happened, we're being listened to; you said 'there won't be a [Parliamentary] majority'; we have a large, [gender] balanced, modernised majority; you said 'the first reforms won't take place, the people will be in the streets' and they've been carried out.”